The term “metaverse” was coined in a 1993 science fiction novel. Since then, it’s grown from a dystopian literary concept to a reality that corporations want to sell you. Strap on some VR goggles and escape your tired analog life! Except that the systemic issues we already have seem to be creeping into the metaverse, too.
As the lines between virtuality and ... Show More
Yesterday
Joanna Stalnaker, "The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death" (Yale UP, 2025)
What would the Enlightenment look like if we viewed it through the eyes of the philosophers as they were facing death? Joanna Stalnaker turns our usual perspective on the Enlightenment on its head, bringing to light a set of works written at the end of the Old Regime and at the e ... Show More
1h 8m
Jun 8
Javier Arbona-Homar, "Explosivity: Following What Remains" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Offering a novel approach to contemporary landscape studies, Explosivity: Following What Remains (U Minnesota Press, 2025) unearths the hidden legacies of violence that have shaped the physical and cultural environment of the San Francisco Bay area. As he sifts through the histor ... Show More
1h 6m
Jun 7
Christina Lord, "Reimagining the Human in Contemporary French Science Fiction" (Liverpool UP, 2023)
The study of French science fiction – even in France – remains an underexploited field. Only recently have French literary scholars been able to gain recognition for the validity of studying SF, but their works are often literary histories. Reimagining the Human in Contemporary F ... Show More
44m 14s
Nov 2022
EXPLORING VIRTUAL WORLDS WITH THE SANDBOX’S SEBASTIEN BORGET
<p>In this episode, we talk with Sebastien Borget co-founder of The Sandbox; one of the most popular virtual worlds in the Metaverse.</p><p>These days, virtual worlds are more than just people playing games. Imagine a virtual world with land, assets, buildings, events and fashion ... Show More
37m 52s
Jul 2022
Matthew Ball - A Manual to The Metaverse - [Invest Like the Best, EP.286]
My guest today is Matthew Ball. Matt is an investor, the former head of strategy at Amazon studios, and one of the brightest minds in the media industry. Through his essays and now his book, which launches today, Matt has established himself as the foremost authority on the Metav ... Show More
1h 22m
May 2022
Live … from the metaverse!
Suddenly it feels like everyone is talking about the metaverse, doesn't it? But what exactly is the metaverse? Wikipedia describes it as “a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection,” but the only real consensus seems to be that it's going to be, well, huge. Googl ... Show More
27m 49s
Dec 2021
Meditations on the Metaverse
On the 28th of October, 2021, Facebook announced The Future…aka, a corporate rebrand. By changing the name of their parent company to Meta, they set out a vision for a new internet. Here, you can meet your colleagues in a virtual meeting room, and/or fence with Mark Zuckerberg. I ... Show More
24m 20s